Flashpoint
by pagerunner
Summary: Because even renegade Sheps have their vulnerable points, and even Thane's cool facade can't hold back everything… and because sometimes, everyone has to blow off some steam. Shepard/Thane, set during the course of ME2.


Despite Shepard's best attempts, not every mission went off as planned.

She came back that day tense and angry, and she knew it, and she _hated_ it, because she knew better - she had to keep up a front of professionalism at all times. This wasn't it. She finally confined her errant energy to the cargo bay, where she paced and swore and set off a biotic blast that knocked over several crates with a briefly satisfying clatter.

That, however, was what revealed Thane, who was standing not far behind them.

In the instant of her explosion, he cast up his own barrier to divert the mess; blocked by the brief ripple of energy, the crates fell harmlessly away. Still, Shepard felt suddenly, sharply responsible for the near miss. She swore again with creative vehemence before apologizing.

"I didn't see you," she said. "That was out of line of me, I'm sorry…."

"No need," he said quietly. His hands were still spread, but the blue light had faded; it looked merely like a shrug now. "No harm done. Except perhaps to the supplies…."

Shepard tangled one hand in her hair and began pacing again. She was still angry, and even Thane's dry humor wasn't enough to divert her from it. She didn't want to be calmed. Not this time.

He lowered his chin, still watching her, as if he was picking up on that.

"You can't take responsibility for all of this, Shepard," he said.

"Not sure that's what I'm doing." She shook her head. "I'm angry at myself, I'm angry at the Illusive Man, I'm pissed off at the Collectors and the entire fucking universe - there's more than enough to go around. I just can't punch all of it at in the face at the same time."

"So you've resorted to tormenting inanimate objects."

"I can get back to living beings if you like."

In the heat of her jagged mood, she'd shot that straight at him, directly and intensely - and then she shut her eyes, ashamed at what her own temper was goading her into. Thane, who hadn't moved, simply waited her out.

"I didn't mean that," she said roughly.

She heard him finally take a step, then another and another. When he spoke again, he was close enough that she could feel the warmth of the words on her lips.

"Not personally, perhaps," he said. "But detachment is not your way, Siha - and when the fire in you is flaring so high that I can see it through your skin, I can expect no less."

She opened her eyes again, disturbed by his words. It wasn't only anger but desperation that showed in her voice this time.

"Inner fire," she said, pointing bitterly at the scars and the cybernetics they revealed. "Is that what this is? Or is it just one more sign of how broken and out of control of everything, even of _myself, _that I am? Because I'm not sure reminding me of that helps _anything, _Thane."

His head tilted. "What would?"

Something about that plain a question, to something so horribly tangled, nearly cracked her down the center. She heard herself laugh in disbelief, realized she was shaking her head. Then Thane touched her - just one hand to her shoulder, in a simple, silent gesture.

As overcharged as she felt, however, as raw and emotionally bared, her physical reaction was so potent that it tore a gasp out of her. The tiniest hint of a sideways smile touched Thane's lips.

"I thought so," he said softly.

She backed up a step.

"Thane," she warned him. "This is _not _a good time."

"Why? Are you afraid of what might happen?"

Her voice cracked with something dark and unsteady. "To you."

Thane shook his head. "I said you carry too much of this," he murmured. "You need to accept that you can't save everyone, can't protect us from everything, and that those of us standing with you are not only aware of this, but willing to face the risk." He focused a deeply strange look on her. "And I have withstood far worse things in time than your anger."

Shepard stared at him.

Thane was still so very, very close. She saw how his breathing had escalated, how much that look in his eyes resembled the intensity before a fight. "Thane Krios," she whispered. "Don't you dare tell me you're getting off on this."

A hint of humor flashed through his expression. "I can hold my tongue if it suits you."

Shepard, having sudden, indecent thoughts about that tongue, struggled to maintain her own composure. She thought in one mad moment that she could see her cybernetic lights reflected in his eyes - or maybe that it was his ownpower, rising up from within.

Inner fire. He certainly had it.

Right then, she wanted to burn in it.

"I'm not angry at you, Thane," she said in one last-ditch attempt to dissuade him, even though she was trembling with the force of her need. "But I am very, very angry. And making you a - a _target _for this isn't going to…"

"Have you ever considered," he said, his voice low and reverberant, "that I've _wanted _to see my warrior angel so unleashed?"

That was possibly the most dangerous thing he could have said. Desire quaked through her, making energy flash at her fingertips. "Holy fuck, Thane. You don't know what you're doing to me."

"You might be surprised." He tilted her chin up. "Just don't expect your force to go unanswered."

"I'm counting on it," she breathed, and surged into the kiss.

She knew instantly that he'd been right about this - it felt so good. It felt better than good. Shepard's whole body jolted with the onrush of heat, and her arms tightened possessively around him. She could feel his chest fill with a rough, deep breath, feel his heartbeat escalate. That sensation of holding his whole life in her arms made her even hungrier. _Is that what it's like? _she wanted to ask. _Do you get this kind of thrill when you've got your target in your bare hands…? _

But she didn't say it, couldn't say it, because his tongue had plunged into her mouth and all she could do was moan.

For a few heady seconds she let herself drown in it, already sliding into the delirium of his touch - but she wanted more than that, and so she fought back up through the waves of color and light and took control of the kiss. Her hands slid down to his hips, rocking him against her, and she bit roughly at his lower lip, making him shudder pleasurably. Then she said, her voice so hoarse she barely recognized it, "This way."

She forcefully walked him backwards. First it was one step, then another, moving them out of the range of the windows above and into a darker, shadowed corner. She moved her hands down his body, both to appreciate the firm, sleek muscles and to push him back against the wall. The sight of him laid out like that was intoxicating.

Touching him was even better.

"God, Thane," she said, sliding her hands restlessly beneath his jacket. The warmth she found made her nerves prickle all over, and she paused to enjoy the sensation. "Did I ever tell you how good you f-"

That was as far as she got, because in that little moment when she let her guard down, he caught her up and spun her around, reversing their positions in no time at all.

Shepard gasped as she slammed back against unrelenting metal, her head striking it with a sharp crack of pain. But then Thane was kissing her again, the touch thorough and heated; it stole all the breath from her, leaving her weak-kneed and moaning. Shepard had very little room to maneuver, but she pressed one leg between his and unabashedly rocked forward against his thigh, trying to relieve the ache building between hers.

She felt him, too, as she pressed close. On another incipient moan, she reached down with one hand to palm him through his clothes. He breathed in hard, a reverberant hum beginning to sound on the exhale.

Then, of course, he moved his mouth to her ear and replied.

"How good I feel?" Thane murmured, his voice rough with arousal as he suggestively pressed into her touch. "Is that what you were going to say?"

Her head fell back. "Ego, Krios," she said, but she was already undoing his trousers. She'd clearly caught him in one of his moods, too, and she wasn't about to waste it.

Thane, after all, was normally so reserved with his emotions. He was thoughtful. Respectful. Careful with her. Sometimes she didn't want careful. He seemed to understand, and to share the need more often than not - although he was far too controlled to tap the basest of his urges gratuitously. She just had to come at him at the right angle, tease at his humor and his pride, and entice that deeply sensual creature within to… indulge himself in her.

It was _so _fucking satisfying when he did.

Besides, Shepard thought while she pushed off his clothes and began to unfasten her own, no matter what else Thane might be, he was and would always be an assassin - and a deeply dangerous man. Half the fun was pushing to see just how close to the line she could get him.

So this time, she decided to make that push literal.

They were both grasping for each other, fingers clutching at skin and rasping against scales, when Shepard called up her biotics again. She did it swiftly enough that Thane didn't have a chance to do much but tense up before she propelled him backwards, aiming to lay him out for the taking. But - as she'd secretly hoped - he didn't let her get away with it. He tucked in mid-fall and rolled aside, coming back to his feet with swift grace and flinging out his own hand. Shepard blocked the oncoming biotic rush, barely. She felt the electric singe of energy brush past her, catching her breath at the thrill of it.

"Faster, Shepard," Thane said, staring her down.

She yanked her shirt off over her head - she was down to just underwear now, while he was entirely bare. She watched the way he shifted his weight, saw every tensing muscle, and of course saw how hard he still was, which made her smirk as she unleashed herself again. This time he blocked it entirely, making the energy rebound. She flung her hands aside, dispersing it; another stack of crates thudded down, knocked several feet away by the blast. Pleasure rippled through her.

"_Faster,"_ he said again.

Shepard stalked closer.

Blue light singed the air around her hands; a familiar buzz radiated around her implant and tingled down her spine. On top of the drugged kisses, on top of her arousal, her whole body was practically _screaming _for action, and she answered it with a swinging fist that Thane neatly blocked. His retaliatory strike, she spun away from. Power crackled in the air, pushing and pulling and threatening to upset them both. She didn't let it. For a few steps she kept pace with him, and she grinned fiercely with the electric intensity of it. Nowher anger really had somewhere to go.

They'd sparred before, but not like this. Not with teeth bared and sweat stinging - not with such _intent _behind every move. She almost had him, once, breaking his balance with a leg sweep and going in to pin him, but he was so damn fast that he was out of her grip before she could finish it. Frustration - and _want _- distracted her just long enough for Thane to regain his footing.

Then he caught hold of her, obviously levering for a flip; she knew she'd end up breathless and gasping on the floor, his body heavy above her, and the idea drove every urge except desire from her mind. Her head tilted back and her body arched, a noise of pure anticipation rising from her throat - and she could feel him reacting to it, switching his tactics in an instant. Pulling her tighter against him, Thane kissed the vulnerable, bared arch of her neck instead, tasting, biting, moving against her. Shepard cried out, and the air around her sparked dangerously. A loose, sharp charge caught Thane across the cheek. He hissed, his hips jolting.

Then his hands moved. She felt a sharp tug, then something loosened and was pulled away. She realized he'd unhooked her bra.

"Cheater," she breathed - although inside, her nerves were singing. She pretended to keep grappling with him, struggling against his muscular hold - and reveling in the friction, feeling _everything _- but now his hands were in places she desperately wanted them, and he was chuckling low in his throat as he pinned her close, back to front. The insistent press of his body made her catch her breath and squirm.

"Any advantage," he said hoarsely into her ear.

His left arm crossed her torso, that hand warmly cupping her breast, while his other hand slid downward. There was no suggestion at combat moves, not anymore - this was a purely sexual slide of skin on skin. Shepard wriggled against him, encouraging it; the movement made him twitch, too. _Any advantage, _she thought in echo.

"One might suspect," Thane said, while his fingers crept under the elastic and pushed downward, "that you intended to lose this fight."

"_You _made it a fight," she breathed, at least trying to rally for defiance, as a point of pride. "If you'd let me have my way…."

Shepard felt his fingertips part her and push in, his biotic current still tingling against her swollen skin. She twisted against him with what could only be called a whimper. Still, she had a sentence to finish:

"You could be inside me by now."

Thane groaned, the sound rumbling through her. He hooked his thumb around her briefs to yank them down with one sharp, decisive pull. They slithered down and ended up dangling off one foot as he twisted and hoisted her up again, with as much mental power as physical, until she had her legs curled around his waist, his lips at her throat, and he was nudging at her so that she squirmed and groaned and struggled for leverage. Yet he held her _just _past the point where she could get there.

"Come on, Thane," she gasped. "Come _on…."_

Despite the plea, he didn't move. His energy intensified instead, thrumming around her until it held her suspended. It was just the two of them now, poised at the verge.

"Tell me, first," he said. "If you want things your way…"

She let out a wordless, urgent sound. He stopped her, staring deep into her eyes.

"You keep pushing, then capitulating. So tell me how you want this."

She looked wild-eyed at him for a moment before she properly heard what he was saying. He wasn't asking her to beg for it. He was simply asking. No matter how they'd been toying with each other, he was going to let her call the shots.

For an instant she trembled with frustrated indecision, because she simply _wanted, _and she wasn't sure she cared how as long as she got the hell _off. _But then she met his eyes again, saw the fire there, and knew. She _had _been wanting him to get the better of her. And he knew it.

She wanted to lose control, and in no small part that was going to require giving it up.

"God," she gasped, shutting her eyes and making herself say it before contrary instinct kicked in. "Just… fuck me, Thane."

She felt the trembling energy rise up through him, and it drove the next few desperate words from her mouth.

"Hard and fast… don't hesitate. Don't even let me push back. Just destroy me. Make me explode…."

The sound he made, she couldn't even describe - somehow feral and broken all at once - and then she lost all sense under a weightless rush of movement, a time-distorted push through the air that lasted until she came down, hard, on a console or the floor or she couldn't even _tell _what, because the breath had all gone from her, and in the vacuum Thane was all she knew. He was on her, predatory eyes fixed on hers, and he clenched one hand around her hip hard enough to leave bruises as he angled her towards him. Then he thrust in so hard that it jarred a cry from her. No prelude. No pretense. Just raw force.

And with almost shocking swiftness, he kept on going.

She couldn't get purchase, couldn't catch up; her back was chafing on the deck and her hair was caught beneath her, pulling painfully on each slamming thrust. But she couldn't care less - this was _exactly _what she'd needed. Heat was unfurling within her, and her muscles were already trembling all over, straining toward that moment of critical tension. Her knees lifted up and her legs clenched tighter around him; she held on and listened to him groan her name and _screamed._

Whether it was his own power or hers that finally detonated everything, she'd never know.

Light crashed through the air, and the thrumming intensity of it hit her such that her body bowed uncontrollably, almost enough to push Thane off. He held on tighter, though, channeling the wave - and all that wayward energy hit her not as a shock this time, but a shuddering pulse that stimulated every possible nerve.

She came so hard that she couldn't even get the breath to cry out.

Thane was coming, too, another broken sound issuing from his throat as his hips juddered arrhythmically. She clenched helplessly around him as he did. Shepard tried to focus, tried to feel as much of it as she could, but things were already fragmenting. Her conscious physical control had been torn mostly away, and so she just rode out the last few greedy pulses of her orgasm as it wracked her body. Afterward, slowly, she felt herself slump back against the metal grating, the tension draining out of her. Left behind were the little shivery feelings of Thane still moving inside her, coming to his own slow stop before he began to soften and slip free. Shepard moaned faintly, reached for him and drew him into a desperate kiss. The look in his eyes before they closed shook her.

"Don't let go," she whispered into his mouth, tasting the sweet haze of him again. "Please…."

Thane rested his forehead against hers, whispered wordless agreement and held on.

Despite the wavers in her vision, she could tell the air was slowly starting to clear. By rights any energy discharge that violent should have set off alarms, but Shepard began to wonder if Thane might have overridden the controls, and kept anyone else from coming to look. He'd seemed to understand what she was aiming for all along. And this - this bruised, exhausted calm - was exactly it. She couldn't think. She didn't have to. She just felt, and let him keep touching her.

Slowly, carefully, he was helping her settle. Eventually he did come free of her, leaving her feeling momentarily empty and strange, but then other things brought her back to herself, like the sudden, sharp cramps in her legs as she straightened them out and the awkward little shove she had to give herself to sit up straight. She was all too clear-eyed by the time she got upright. Thane helped hoist her onto a crate - just with physical strength this time, for they'd both exhausted their biotic reserves for a while, but he still had plenty of the other, although his arms were trembling a little from exertion.

Shepard shifted her legs, keenly aware of the wetness there, but he'd found a cloth from an upended box of cleaning supplies and was gently stroking it now over her reddened inner thighs. She'd chafed herself against his skin; she'd need to do something about that, later.

"You… don't need to…." she tried to say, but he shook his head and finished. Then he blinked up at her. There was something odd in his eyes.

"Why do you look so self-conscious _now_, Siha?" he said softly.

Instinct, as usual, said to deny it and push back - but again, he was right. The endearment only intensified the feeling. So did the sight of him kneeling before her like this. Shepard gripped her knees to stop her hands from trembling.

It took her a minute to admit it.

"That was…. I haven't let myself go like that since…." _Ever, possibly. _She looked back at him. He kept staring. Seeing everything.

"You're going to remember every detail," she said. "Now you know."

Somehow she hadn't expected him to smile like that, wry and a little strange.

"Know what? That even Commander Shepard doesn't always want to be in command?" He traced one finger down her cheek, along the line of a scar. "That you wish you could just let everything go?"

He was hitting uncomfortably close to the mark. Shepard looked aside, but Thane caught the opposite side of her chin with his thumb and turned her back to face him.

"Tell me what you just saw in me," he said.

Her mouth opened, then closed again. She wasn't sure where to start. Ferocity, determination, raw power and desire - and yet emotion beneath it to almost frightening depths, and such awareness of her, always….

The intensity was still there, in fact, and it made her hedge the answer. "I'm not great at talking about these things."

He let go of her chin, letting one finger trail down her throat and rest curled in the hollow. His thumb rubbed softly over her collarbone before lowering, and brushing - perhaps a _little _opportunistically - across her breast before settling. Shepard quirked half a smile.

"I saw… someone who's trying _really _hard for balance," she answered at last. "No matter what you want or how much you want it."

"It's not always easy."

"I know," she said softly.

"And it's been a long time since anyone… let me…."

He hesitated over the words too. Shepard tilted her head, studying him a while before she said shrewdly, "Let yourself go?"

He said nothing, but he nodded once. Then he said at last, his voice dry but his smile returning, "I fear you may be a dangerous influence, Siha."

"Or maybe it's exactly what you need."

She meant that for herself as much as anything - and from that glint in his eyes, she had the feeling he knew it. Balance. Release. Someone who understood. They _both _needed it. She reached across, and in lieu of saying it so nakedly, ran her fingertips along the ridges of his scalp and down until she could pull him into one more thorough kiss.

Then he got up, giving her the opportunity for a long, intimate look at him before he drew her to her feet, too. Reality slowly filtered back in when he did.

"I suppose we have a mess to clean up," she said abstractedly. To her surprise, though, Thane must have had held back a little energy even after all this, because with a quick push of one hand, the worst of the toppled crates arranged themselves into a neater row on the floor, and their scattered clothes landed into one pile. Thane reached down to sort out the collection.

A sudden idea struck her, however, and Shepard grabbed the entire bundle in her arms instead. While Thane, one hand still outstretched, gave her a curious look, she gave him a sideways smile.

"I'd say my reports can still wait a while yet," she said. "How about you come upstairs with me?"

Thane arched his brow at her. "You still…."

"I think this all deserves a little more," she said more softly, "than just taking the edge off. Don't you?"

She could see a rekindled flicker in his eyes. Shepard held the gaze, still hugging their clothes haphazardly to her chest, and backed up across the floor until she could reach the elevator call button. She released one hand from the pile so she could hit it.

Something, of course, fell loose in the process. Thane reached forward to grab it. He came up holding her bra again.

Shepard's smile mutated into a full-on smirk by the time the elevator door opened. She stepped right back into it. Thane took a moment to consider the fabric in his hands, then gave in with a crooked smile of his own - and joined her.

"Now," he said dryly as the doors closed, "to pray to all the gods that ever were that no one _else _is going to want to get on this elevator…."

Shepard snorted, then, for the first time in what felt like years, burst out laughing. And she kept on at it until she reached her room, where Thane set about silencing her in the very best way possible - and in exactly the way that both of them needed.


End file.
